Photo Credit: People Magazine
By Howard Campbell
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Trench Town (Jamaica) has produced its share of superstars, one Bob Marley comes readily to mind. But when power couple Jay Z and Beyonce showed up in the fabled Jamaican community to film scenes for a music video, residents turned out in numbers.
The duo, accompanied by an entourage that included local police, arrived in the area at noon on March 21. They shot scenes along Collie Smith Drive and Fifth Street, where Marley once lived.
Donnette Dowe is the manager of the Trench Town Culture Yard, a renovated tenement which inspired some of Marley’s greatest songs including No Woman No Cry. She said, “it is a good thing for celebrities to visit the neighborhood which has been besieged by criminal activity for many years.”
Photo Credit: People Magazine
“The area has a reputation for being a bad place, but when celebrities come here nothing happens to them. Jay Z realize that the people in Trench Town show nothing but love, that’s why him take Beyonce here,” she said.
Jay Z visited the Culture Yard last year with Damian ‘Junior Gong’ Marley, one of Marley’s sons. Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, rappers Snoop Dogg and Nas and actor Steven Segal have also toured the site which has the shell of the singer’s VW van, his bed and first guitar.
Beyonce and Jay Z also filmed scenes for the music video in other parts of Kingston, the Jamaica capital. Dowe said she was informed of their pending visit two weeks ago and sworn to secrecy.
The most famous members of The Wailers (Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer) are among the impressive list of musicians who lived in Trench Town during the 1960s.
Singers Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, the Wailing Souls and The Heptones also spent their formative years there.
